


Angels We Have Heard on High

by Shadaras



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fluff, Flying, Gen, Injury Recovery, Medical Procedures, Prosthesis, Surgery, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5525936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He was taken home (to the </i>Finalizer<i>, on one of the medical floors, which was a nursery more than anything else) in swaddling clothes, and it was only when the medics unwrapped him that they discovered the anomaly:</i></p>
<p>
  <i>FN-2187 had wings.</i>
</p>
<p>Finn was born with wings, and had no idea until the Resistance medics took him in to care for his lightsaber wounds. Now that he knows, he maybe kind of wants to do something about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels We Have Heard on High

He was taken home (to the _Finalizer_ , on one of the medical floors, which was a nursery more than anything else) in swaddling clothes, and it was only when the medics unwrapped him that they discovered the anomaly:

FN-2187 had wings.

They were small, and covered in puffy gray feathers. The med-techs looked at them, contemplated them, and then, after a brief check to ensure that none of the other children taken from the same facility had such an anomaly (they did not, and so no fault was assigned to either the scout team or the troopers who had taken the infants), decided that they would remove the wings if he passed all other physical examinations.

It didn’t matter to them why the wings existed. Enough human-like species existed within the vast span of the galaxy that it was reasonable for FN-2187 to be a cross-breed. His genetics, when tested for flaws, revealed nothing out of the ordinary. His reflexes were excellent. His grip strength was on the high end of average. He followed gaze and burbled attentively in response to stimuli.

All in all, FN-2187 was an excellent candidate for the stormtrooper program, once they removed his wings. They did it carefully, excising the wing structure down to the secondary shoulder-blades, which were left primarily intact, due to the difficulty of filling excess space and the fact that, as internal structures, they were unlikely to have undue effect on FN-2187’s physical capabilities. The muscles attached to the wings were not yet developed enough to interfere with, and were deemed a hassle for similar reasons.

FN-2187 stayed in the medical wing for three months longer than any other child taken in his set, until the doctors were satisfied that his back was healed enough to be released to the rough-and-tumble play of the other infants and their caretakers. The wings had been long since disposed of, incinerated like any other medical waste. The only marks left were two scars on his back, which ran from the bottom of his (visible, ordinary) shoulderblades to slightly above the center of his back.

Nobody thought anything of this; they were simply part of who FN-2187 was, and they had always been there. They turned soft and dark and faintly purple and stayed just a little shiny, as he aged. They never disappeared entirely, but they never interfered with his movement; and if they ached a little in the cold, that wasn’t any different from how any non-fatal injuries were treated. Everyone had a blaster scar or two; FN-2187 just had surgical scars that, everyone assumed, had occurred before he had become part of the First Order.

The initial medical team would have seen no reason to correct this assumption, if they had known of it. By their reasoning, it would be true: FN-2187 had not become part of the First Order until he passed out of their care for the first time.

FN-2187 ignored the way his back hurt during puberty. Everyone ached. Everyone ate more than usual. He just put it down to the scars and ignored it. He ignored, too, the way his chest muscles developed more quickly than expected for someone who wasn’t trained in melee fighting. Everyone developed differently. This was just how his body wanted to grow, and it meant he’d be more likely to be pulled for special training someday. That was something to be proud of.

Dreaming of flying was also perfectly normal. It just meant something about being ambitious. That wasn’t a bad thing, in this organization. That the wings on his back in the dreams felt real, and that the feeling lingered into waking minutes of his morning -- that was a little stranger. When FN-2187 mentioned that to the psychologist on staff, a note entered his file, next to ‘surgery to correct anatomical anomaly’: _FN-2187 may have lingering subconscious psychosomatic connection to anomalous physiology. Monitor in case of increased identification._

FN-2187 was told, at that time, that, “No, it’s perfectly normal for dreams to take some time to wear off. You have noted that in regards to your emotional state before, I expect. While it is rarer with physical sensations, we do not consider it abnormal or problematic unless it lasts for longer than thirty minutes or effects your ability to function.” No further mention of anomalous dream sensations ever occurred, to the medical staff’s knowledge.

This did not mean that FN-2187 only felt the ghost of wings once; it simply meant that after seeing the psychologist enter a note on a datapad, and then respond at length, he suspected it wasn’t worth mentioning again. After all, it never met the conditions listed for abnormality; therefore it must be fine.

He didn’t mention it to his fellow troopers, either, but that was more because they never really talked about their dreams -- unless, of course, to say such things as “I totally kissed you in my dreams last night, want to see how accurate my subconscious got it?” or “I’m so glad that that was just a dream. I don’t want Kylo Ren to accidentally blow up Starkiller Base while we’re still building it.”

*

Rey and Chewie carried Finn off Starkiller Base in the _Falcon_ , and when they landed on D’Qar he was rushed to the bacta tanks immediately -- he was still alive, but it was close. Being dumped in a bacta tank required removing all of one’s clothes, though modesty coverings over the genitals could remain (and, when Finn asked, he was relieved to hear he had been given some). This meant that the medical staff (and whoever came to gawk, which had been discouraged on principle, but Poe and Rey had come by anyway, he’d heard) had seen that instead of there being _one_ long scar over his back, there were _three_.

“It did tell us that you healed well,” Dr. Kalonia told him brusquely. “It meant that we could be more hopeful about your recovery.”

“That’s good,” Finn said. He was holding his right arm out to his side and slowly raising and lowering it, as instructed. It was helping ensure he’d keep full range of movement after being stabbed in the shoulder, apparently. “I don’t know anything about those scars, though. They’ve always been there, I guess, but that’s all I can tell you.”

Dr. Kalonia scowled, and tapped on her datapad. She turned it to face him, and said, “These are scans of your body taken while you were in the bacta tank, to ensure we hadn’t missed any internal wounds we’d need to be careful of. Notice anything unusual?”

Finn reached forward and flipped through the levels of the scan (external, muscle, bone--) and stopped at the display of his skeleton. “That can’t be right.”

“We ran the scan again to be sure, and it’s exactly right.” She tapped the growths on either side of his spine, under his shoulder-blades. “You’ve got what look like some kind of shoulder-blades here, though they aren’t connected to anything. If you’ve had those scars as long as you say, I assume whatever was attached to them was removed by the time you were one and a half, at the absolute latest.”

“But...” Finn faltered, and leaned back (carefully, not disturbing the new scar that crossed over the old ones), and resisted the urge to try and feel the things that had apparently always been in his body that he’d never known about. “If I had a-- a birth defect? Why would... those are usually in the files for us to see if we want...”

Dr. Kalonia, for once, looked actually sympathetic. “I don’t know,” she said, and patted Finn’s knee. “I don’t know how the First Order doctors operate. I assume they had a reason, and that they believed their choice to be the best choice for everyone involved.”

Finn nodded, numb. “Would--” He swallowed, and told himself that these people listened to him when he asked them things like this, and tried again. “Would you mind if I... thought about this alone for a bit?”

“Of course.” She reclaimed her datapad and rose with a smile. “You know how to call us if you want anything?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Once Dr. Kalonia was gone, Finn let his head fall back and scrubbed at his face with his left hand. “Fuck,” he whispered, letting his eyes burn with tears. “Why did they hide this?” he asked the ceiling.

Predictably, it didn’t answer.

He dreamed of flying again, that night. Large smoke-gray wings spread out from his back, and the muscles on his chest tightened and they swung down, lifting him into the sky. Snow fell away beneath him, and he was flying up to the stars, where he knew the _Falcon_ would be waiting for him. His wings surged on his back, powerful and right, and when he woke from his dream of flying through space under his own power, the sensation lingered, an ache deep in his back that was so familiar he never thought about it anymore.

Now, Finn thought about it again, and called up the medical scans Dr. Kalonia had shown him, and took the knowledge of anatomy that the stormtrooper program had given him, and then he swore, rather a lot. He was carefully sorting through encyclopedia records about known species when Dr. Kalonia returned for his mid-morning check-in. Instead of greeting her the way he normally did, Finn said, “Did you know there are something like three hundred humanoid species with six limbs, arranged such that they’re bipeds with both arms and wings?”

“I did not.” She seated herself on a stool. “Why do you mention this?”

“If I’d been born with an underdeveloped conjoined twin, it wouldn’t look that pretty.” Finn was surprised by how calm his voice sounded. He didn’t look up from his scrolling. If he didn’t look at her, it was easier. “I also wouldn’t have been accepted into the stormtrooper program due to likelihood of death. So it couldn’t be that. There are enough species in the galaxy that there’s got to be _something_ that fits the profile.” He blinked back hot tears that threatened to spill onto his cheeks. “Also, I dream of flying a lot.”

An extended silence, broken only by the soft hum of medical equipment, filled the air. Finn ignored it, continuing to sort species into the ‘definitely not’ and ‘maybe?’ categories he’d defined on his datapad. He didn’t want to see Dr. Kalonia’s expression right now.

When Dr. Kalonia spoke, though, Finn turned to face her, and said, “What?”

“I said, do you _want_ wings?”

She just looked curious. Not condemning, not judgemental. Just curious. Finn blinked at her, fingers still hovering over his datapad, and then slowly lowered his hands to his lap. “No, I heard you the first time.”

“And you understand the question?”

“I...” Finn looked down, and rubbed at his newly-healed shoulder. “I think so. I hadn’t--” He broke off, shaking his head. “That--”

“Do you need some time to think about it?”

He nodded again, not even trying for words this time.

She left, the creak of the chair and the swish of the curtain the only signs of her departure.

Finn looked back at the datapad on its mount, shoved it away, and curled up on the bed, not even caring how much his back hurt as he stretched it so that he could be a relatively small ball. His second shoulder-blades ached, and he let himself imagine, fully imagine, what it would be like to have those wings he dreamed of. What it would be like to spread his wings and fall off a cliff into the air and just soar back up. He wouldn’t be able to match the speed of a spaceship, but...

They would be _his_.

He could choose this. All for himself. It wouldn’t make him a better fighter. It wouldn’t really help anyone. It would be a waste of the Resistance’s resources to help him get these. It would be a drain on his body as he learned them, especially while he was still healing from the lightsaber wounds. It would be such a difficult idea to implement. All he had was the dreams to guide him, after all. How could he even make it work?

Finn shook his head, letting the tears run freely down his cheeks and over his nose onto the sheets now. “I want this,” he whispered to himself. “I don’t care. I _want_ this.”

It took him until nearly lunchtime to uncurl himself, to convince himself that he really could choose this, and the doctors would support him. Everything he’d learned supported that. Dr. Kalonia wouldn’t have asked if it hadn’t been something she was willing to do.

When Dr. Kalonia came back, just after he finished eating, he told her, “I want wings.”

She nodded, and Finn smiled at little at how unsurprised she seemed. “It’s going to take some time,” she said, sitting down again.

“I know,” Finn said, voice finally solid again. “But I figure that’s okay, since you wouldn’t let me have another surgery on my back until you were sure that slice was done healing, right?”

She smiled at him. “Exactly.”

He smiled back at her, relief flooding him. “So, where do we start?”

*

Three months (and one base) later, Dr. Kalonia attached the initial implants to his back. The metal and plastic bones were just a skeleton; no feathers yet. “Figure out how to move them without knocking everything over, and _then_ we’ll get you the rest,” she’d told him when he initially protested. “You’re going to have enough fun learning how to make all those muscles you didn’t know what to do with work the way they were supposed to.”

There’d been a smile playing at the edge of her lips, though, and Finn had learned how to read her, so he’d just grinned back and said, “Okay.”

It took him another three months to master the mechanical bones well enough for Dr. Kalonia to attach the shorter coverts and secondary feathers. “No,” she told him when he asked about the primaries. “You’ll break yourself if I give those to you right away.”

She was, Finn had to admit, right. He’d gotten the hang of not bumping into absolutely everything with the bones, and the secondaries added yet more weight and area to his back. Adjusting to the posture shift was one thing, but the way he had to mentally add another few inches of space around him was another. He could feel the impacts through the feathers, too, but that didn’t make it any easier to retrain his mind.

He adapted quickly. That was one of the things stormtrooper training had been very good for. It was only one more month, this time, until Dr. Kalonia gave him the last of his feathers, and his last Dire Warning Speech, though this one was far more abbreviated than any of the others: “Don’t try to kill yourself for at least a month,” was all she said this time.

Finn blew her a kiss.

She waved it off with a laugh. “Go show them off to your friends,” she said, almost fondly. “Showing off will teach you better than anything I can say.”

Showing off involved only jumping off _small_ hills, because the secondaries had given him enough lift to figure out basic gliding. With the extra span of the primaries, Finn was pretty sure he’d go further than before -- even if there was a bit more weight, the area more than compensated for that. He’d even figured out how to compensate for the extra length, and avoided bumping into things almost entirely, this time around.

So it really was just a week before Poe and Rey took him to a cliff and waited at the bottom. Before they’d headed down in a speeder, Rey told him, “I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on the Force, so if you fuck this up entirely, I can probably catch you.”

Poe had just grinned at him and said, “I want to see some tricks, but proof of concept first, okay?”

Finn laughed at both of them, giddy, and stared over the cliff until they’d gotten to the bottom and he saw Rey’s lightsaber waving in the air, a clear signal for him that they were ready.

He took a deep breath, and stood up. There wasn’t much wind today, just a light breeze that wrapped around his wings and he could feel in his core. He spread his wings, and they lifted slightly in the wind. The metal was dove-grey, shinier and bluer than what he’d originally dreamed of, but that was okay; the color reminded him of Poe’s X-wing and Rey’s lightsaber, like he was carrying bits of them with him wherever he went.

On that thought, before he could talk himself out of it, Finn jumped off the cliff, held his body tight, and spread his wings to the wind.

The first second was terrifying. He was falling, and there was nothing to catch him, and wind whipped around his face, and he was pretty sure he screamed.

The second second _hurt_ , as his wings caught the air and pulled him up into a glide that his body was only sort of prepared for.

The third second was glorious and everything he imagined, and his scream turned into a shout of pure joy.

He was flying, and the ground was rushing by beneath him, and he turned without needing to think about it and circled back over where he could see, and faintly hear, Rey and Poe shouting back up at him and jumping and hugging each other.

He laughed, and let himself relax into a gentle dive, spiralling down towards them with confidence born out of how right it felt to be in the air. He landed with only a small stumble, and when Poe and Rey grabbed him, he wrapped his arms and wings both around them and said, breathless, “Do I get to try tricks now?”

“Yes,” they said, at the same moment, and Finn grinned, and everything was right in the world.


End file.
